Skyrim voice actors speak out against porn mods using their AI generated voices

[Asrienda]

The actual contempt some people here are showing towards VAs is worrying

[Mez558]

2 hours ago, bjornk said:

"Likeness of their voice" does not mean it's their voice, that's the point you're missing. In fact, if you put voice samples through a sound analysis program you could probably see that there's a clear difference, despite the perceived "likeness". If it was indeed their voice, in other words, something that they have read and recorded is being used without permission, then you may have been correct.

 

No I am not missing that because it's not relevant. A persons likeness is protected in both the US and the UK. It is especially relevant when the likeness used has something they are famous for and has commercial value.
This isn't a new law either, the law just hasn't yet caught up with technology,
Bette Midler sued Ford as they used someone to sing like her on an advert because she refused. She won the case on appeal but this was back in the late 70's so that precedent has been set.

 

3 hours ago, bjornk said:

Mods using an AI generated voice don't try to persuade people that it's actually the voice actor's voice and make money out of it.

 

 

If the Mod is not being sold in anyway then there is probably nothing the voice actor can do about it.
Rights of publicity or Personality Rights seems to really boil down to, is someone making money from this with out that persons knowledge and permission? If so then there is a case to be made against it. Replicating a Voice Actors Voice and using it without permission in a product that is then sold would fall under this

 

3 hours ago, bjornk said:

 

That's perhaps your opinion, but laws aren't universal, what is considered a freedom in one country, can get you in jail in another or vice versa.

 

AFAIK both this site and Nexus are hosted in the US so are come under, whatever State they are located in, laws. I suspect if this mod, whatever it is, was hosted and sold in China then there would unlikely be anything that could be done about it.
 

3 hours ago, bjornk said:

I don't think that is any different in a mod dialogue voiced by AI.

 

Yes of course, there is no such thing as comic timing, it's a myth and you just need to read jokes our on stage to be funny.
That was sarcasm btw.
 

3 hours ago, bjornk said:

Do you think if Laura Bailey was just a random person taken from the street, she could've done an equally good job? They are employed because they have voice acting skills that a random person doesn't have even he or she they had the same identical voice.

 

It's good that you accept that they get their work for their skills/talent and so hopefully realise this is something that AI could potentially take away from them.
But you've missed the point I was trying to make about that persons voice being important to a role and whoever casts the role is as much looking at how they sound as how the deliver a line. Which is why I used the two most famous Voice actors, involved in the gaming industry, I could think of. I could not imagine Serana working as well with Ashley Johnson doing her voice.
 

 

3 hours ago, bjornk said:

In your analogy, neither the model nor the photographer has any right to demand more cause they've already been paid for their work, unless they signed a contract for royalties and such. Whoever owns the rights for those photographs, in this case it's most likely the media publication who bought it from the photographer, has the right to pursue legal action against the magazine, if they can prove their claim that is. In any case, the model which is what we're discussing in this thread, has no ground to ask anything from the person who generated AI images.

Yes they have. Maybe I didn't make that clear in what I meant for step 3.

The person who has trained their AI model on the photos from this shoot can make an entirely new set using the photographer's style and the Models appearance. No one owns these images, they are not copies they are new images. Someone's likeness cannot actually be copyrighted but likeness is still protected and that person still has rights of publicity. Not sure about the photographer, unless he has a very distinct style I think his case would be harder to win.

If I haven't managed to convince that these people could actually have a case, if someone is using their likeness for financial gain then I give up, I do not have the words to explain it further. I would recommend you educate yourself on the matter rather than just assuming that you because you have an opinion on this it's actually right. The internet can be a wonderful source of information as much as it is a wonderful source of clips of morons injuring themselves for their 15minutes.

As for my own opinion on the whole matter, I'm in two minds on it.
On the one hand, mod authors being able to create content that is voiced and fits with the game is great and I am all for that.
But on the other, does allowing this set the precedent that it's OK to use AI instead of actors and that one day all films would be totally CG, both visual and audio. That isn't a good thought.


 

[27X]

3 hours ago, Asrienda said:

The actual contempt some people here are showing towards VAs is worrying

 

Choosing to work for a corporation and business that in no way shape or form respects you is a you problem. There are several reasons several hyper famous actors refuse to do video game work without a unique iron clad contract that resemble film work instead of IE.

 

Secondly VAs have been at the forefront of treating paying customers like ass. You should probably do some actual research before randomly spraying assumptions into the nether for the ol virtue points.

Edited July 23, 2023 by 27X

[FauxFurry]

On 7/22/2023 at 1:31 AM, bjornk said:

Can you sue someone, a comedian for instance, for imitating your voice saying some stupid or obscene shit in a show? Is impersonation, imitating a person's appearance, voice etc. a crime? How come so many Elvis impersonators for instance have gotten away with it then? If there is any legal ground for this in the law of a county, which I doubt, then these voice actors might also have a case. If not, then those voice actors better shut the fuck up, because an AI generated voice are not their voices, it's the imitation of their voices. If the AI voice says something obscene in a mod, how can these voice actors can even claim that it's their voice if they've never ever recorded something like that? And if they want to claim copyright on the training data set of the AI, I really doubt they'll be able to find any legal ground for that either.

There was also this line of prank calls put out by Camp Chaos that no action was ever taken against.

 

[FauxFurry]

4 hours ago, Asrienda said:

The actual contempt some people here are showing towards VAs is worrying

It is more of a pragmatic view of work-for-hire than contempt regardless of some voice actors as individuals do earn every bit of contempt directed their way.

This is not much different than a corporation using that fantastic piece that one did for a cover of a sequential art book as tangentially related merchandise indefinitely (by which I mean until the copyright expires) while others emulate said cover in their own works which are legally distinct yet pay homage to the original clearly. 

 

Creator owned works are the only way to own one's performance free and clear and even then, there are pretty harsh limits on how far one can protect one's own voice, seeing as how allowing such protections would open a messy can of worms. What would be done with people with similar or the same voice (there are only so many voice patterns that can emerge without human vocal chords evolving fairly drastically in the near future), be it in strangers or family members including standard siblings or twins? Can art styles be copyrighted next as specific art styles are as unique to the individual as their fingerprints (even more so than their voice)? 

[bjornk]

1 hour ago, Mez558 said:

No I am not missing that because it's not relevant.

 

I wonder if you'd still claim it's not relevant if someone tried to prove that a voice in a recording wasn't theirs, after all, you seem to think "likeness" which is completely subjective, is perfectly enough to prove the opposite.

 

2 hours ago, Mez558 said:

Yes of course, there is no such thing as comic timing, it's a myth and you just need to read jokes our on stage to be funny.

That was sarcasm btw.

 

It's the mod author who writes the dialogue using their own creativity, in that regard there's absolutely no difference.

 

2 hours ago, Mez558 said:

It's good that you accept that they get their work for their skills/talent and so hopefully realise this is something that AI could potentially take away from them.

 

AI cannot take away their skill as an actor any time soon, what you say is nothing but virtue signalling.

 

2 hours ago, Mez558 said:

But you've missed the point I was trying to make about that persons voice being important to a role and whoever casts the role is as much looking at how they sound as how the deliver a line. Which is why I used the two most famous Voice actors, involved in the gaming industry, I could think of. I could not imagine Serana working as well with Ashley Johnson doing her voice.

 

Nah, if someone else had voiced Serana, you'd still say the same thing about them.

 

 

[sweforce]

7 hours ago, NickNozownik said:

Looks like another group of people trying to make extra money, like looking for someone to sue or starting a pity party in hopes of getting easy cash. Who knows, maybe they are dumb and delusional enough to think that people who use those mods will say "Oh it's that famous glorious 500IQ best actor ever telling me to suck his dick in a porn mod! I can't believe he voice acted this!".

Such groups can be dangerous and costly since they can be very good at what they do. They do not need to win in court to gain sympathy and they can go past the court system altogether by pressuring organisations to disassociate with their target. Suddenly a politician has no bank account because they pressured the bank to shut down those accounts or suffer the wrath of an angry mob and boycotts. Alternative media organisations are constantly hounded by bank issues like this. You cannot run an operation if people are unable to pay you due to banks refusal to transfer funds to you.

[t.ara]

Lot of different (buisiness)-areas will in future become scratched and overshadowed by KI.  This surrounding-tasks needs even no KI in different branches. While in the music-buisiness the borders of copyrights became scratched since lot of years, again and again, this also will happen with different other artistic- and buisiness-areas, same way. And this VA-business is one really very small one of those, which now have to learn to live with that.

And the original-actor´s voices are replaced by translation-actors (which mostly are emotionless ugly, anoying and low-quality) for different countries. Bad, bader, most bad.

Mods (SKYRIM) and their content are no marketing object, which says it all in conjunction with this context.

SKYRIM´s dialogue tracks of audio are the most bad quality aspects of this game at all. Same is meant to be for the audio integration, which is an overall technical disaster.

 

 

 

Edited July 23, 2023 by t.ara

[Miauzi]

Vor 15 Stunden sagte Bjornk:

 

Ich glaube nicht, dass es jemals einen solchen Standard gegeben hat. Haben Sie zum Beispiel schon einmal einen Gerichtsfall gehört, bei dem eine Person von einer berühmten Person verklagt wird, weil sie sich in einem Telefonstreich einwandfrei als diese Person ausgegeben hat und das Opfer des Streichs davon überzeugt war, dass es sich wirklich um diese Person handelte? I hatte nicht. Ganz zu schweigen davon, dass dies ein zweischneidiges Schwert gewesen wäre, wenn dies der Fall gewesen wäre. Mit anderen Worten: Jeder, auch Schauspieler und Synchronsprecher, könnte wegen Identitätsdiebstahls verklagt werden.

 

Wenn es außerdem darauf ankommt, wie das Publikum die Stimme wahrnimmt, könnte man leicht argumentieren, dass Mod-Benutzer sich vollkommen darüber im Klaren sind, dass es sich nicht um die echte Stimme eines Schauspielers handelt.

 

 

Well - here in Berlin (German capital) there was a daily show on a very big stage (with more than 1000 spectators) called "Stars in Concert".

All spectators know - that the people up there singing live (!) are not the real Elvis or the real Tina Turner ... Everyone knows that there are "copies" up there.

The older ones still know the singer "David Hasselhoff" - who is also known as an actor ("baywatch" and "Knight Rider").

Well, the boy is actually of the opinion that he brought down the Berlin Wall with a song he sang... and that's probably why he considered Berlin his second home for a while.

Anyway, he had the idea - to appear in the show "Stars in Concert" himself ... as "himself". as "himself".

How did it end? -> the audience booed him so loudly ... that he fled the stage.

Afterwards, numerous spectators complained to the organiser - why they had been treated to such a lousy "immitator".

Yes - the actual Hasselhoff impersonator was much better received by the audience than the real Hasselhoff ... they didn't even realise that the real Hasselhoff was on stage in front of them.

You may laugh about it and you should ... but don't overlook how quickly "fiction" and "reality" can become blurred.

---

 

By the way ... besides the face, the voice is also a very important element that makes an actor ... otherwise there would not have been so many silent film stars at the end of their careers with the advent of sound films.

But it's part of an age that is almost devoid of empathy - that a large number of egomaniacs don't care at all - the main thing is that they have a great game.

[Wolfstorm321]

8 hours ago, sweforce said:

Such groups can be dangerous and costly since they can be very good at what they do. They do not need to win in court to gain sympathy and they can go past the court system altogether by pressuring organisations to disassociate with their target. Suddenly a politician has no bank account because they pressured the bank to shut down those accounts or suffer the wrath of an angry mob and boycotts. Alternative media organisations are constantly hounded by bank issues like this. You cannot run an operation if people are unable to pay you due to banks refusal to transfer funds to you.

 

 

That's what cryptocurrencies are for. But for some reason, the npcs are afraid of using it. Even the stable ones that are pegged to the dollar. 

[User39042]

Well, I haven't actually seen the contract that Bethesda made with the voice actors. However, I feel like I could make a good case for the voice actor as their lawyer that Bethesda doesn't own their voice, only the personality of a character and the lines. I'd simply attack the LL dialogue as not being true to the character and therefor does not fall into Bethesda's ownership.

On an other note, everyone should hire NSFW voice actors anyway. 9/10 they are better than SFW actors. NSFW actors remember that it's supposed to be fun being weird or quirky and that it's make believe.

I think the main irritating factor here is everyone hates holier-than-thou white knights that attack the LL community as a means of virtue signaling to up their social status in their cultish social spheres of supercilious psychosis. An ongoing rampant problem in today's time.

 

I do understand the plight of a voice actor who has no control over their voice being used for stuff they don't agree on. But, rule 34, even back in the day, like with some actress, there was some look-alike getting a money shot on payperview claiming to be that actress. Just an aspect of the internet everyone has to accept when putting their face on the net, as there's no way to stop that with AI now.

[SmedleyDButler]

I think an overlooked aspect of the overall discussion is that throughout Skyrim's life, there have been some modders willing to pay original Skyrim VA's for mod dialogue. And I don't mean like $50, I mean actually pay for work at rate. Yes, this was rare, but the intention (and money!) was there a few times, and perhaps it would have happened more if anyone had had any notable success. As for any conflict with Beth, it would have been legal so long as the mods weren't monetized, just like any mod.

 

As far as I know, not once did this ever come to pass, because even though most Skyrim VAs are far more obscure, from a modder's point of view such people are busy and effectively unobtainable as any Hollywood star. From the VA's perspective, they don't know which modder is worth working with, as most are random amateurs with no idea how professional VA hiring goes.

 

Forgetting the broader implications of machine learning for a bit, AI as used to replicate voices for video game mods is essentially being used to plug a hole in between professional VA work and resources available to modders.

[ghastley]

Aren’t there examples of characters in Skyrim where a new VA was substituted for an expansion or DLC? Didn’t that happen with Hermaeus Mora? 

 

If so, the whole argument collapses. If they can be substituted, they can be substituted by AI.

[y_sengaku]

3 hours ago, ghastley said:

Aren’t there examples of characters in Skyrim where a new VA was substituted for an expansion or DLC?

 

Not replaced, but the vanilla voice files of a few unique npcs actually consists of two (or more) different VAs:

• The most well-known example is Esbern (Late Max von Sydow and not credited another male VA): related video on Youtube
• Another example that I know that three ancient Nord heroes - their combat voices are generic, and unique VAs voice a small number of quest dialogue lines. Hakon One-Eye in fact also has two different generic voice-type for combat voices (quest/ Sovngarde ver has MaleNordCommander and summoned ver has MaleGuard (source)).

[Metro Station]

On 7/23/2023 at 3:55 AM, NickNozownik said:

Looks like another group of people trying to make extra money

 

This is absolutely true. And it's certainly an open secret who they are...

In my country, this game has been played many times and with such success that nobody would have believed before.

[FauxFurry]

On 7/25/2023 at 3:12 PM, ghastley said:

Aren’t there examples of characters in Skyrim where a new VA was substituted for an expansion or DLC? Didn’t that happen with Hermaeus Mora? 

 

If so, the whole argument collapses. If they can be substituted, they can be substituted by AI.

Mora's voice was replaced for the Dragonborn DLC. The base game quest involving him was fully re-voiced, as well.

Eola's voice for Hearthfire content is a down-pitched version of the Young Eager female voice rather than the Sultry Female voice. Yes, BGS re-used assets for new voice lines first. 

[VersuchDrei]

On 7/22/2023 at 4:46 AM, User39042 said:

*hands actress a few lines of slurping, gurgling, and deepthroat noises*

 

11Labs isn't capable of doing those sounds. It isn't even capable of doing laughter. It's very good at dialogue, but that's the only thing it can do. So no, I can't imagine that interview.

 

On 7/22/2023 at 4:46 AM, User39042 said:

"Well we saw this quest mod on LL... It was pretty convincing."

 

How would they have found it? It's not like a mod expanding the Dawnguard quest line with 11labs advertises itself as having Laura Baileys voice in it. So they had to actively look up prior works of the VA, find out there was Skyrim in it, then look up which actor they voiced in Skyrim, then actively search for mods expanding this actors dialogue and then install Skyrim and fire up the mod to listen to said dialogue.

Also you're denying the employer the slightest bit of common sense. Do you really think someone who is in the business of hiring VOs doesn't know what is going on with 11labs? Do you really think they'd find stuff on LL and think even for a second "ah yes, this free mod by tittylover27 must've been the work of a professional, renowned VA"?

[Mr. Otaku]

Okay so there are two sides to this.

 

1) The risk for VAs losing their income is very real if big studios aren't legally stopped from using voices that haven't been explicitly sold for use in AI voice cloning by the original VAs.

2) AI voiced mods are not a threat to VAs because they're free, if the modders aren't making any money from the voices they're using then the VAs have little grounds to object.

 

AI is changing the art landscape (tech in general has been doing that since the industrial revelation) and rules/systems need to be placed in accordance with artist security, vapidly arguing "who's to blame" achieves nothing and makes you look like a raging retard with no idea what's at stake or what's even happening.

[Alessia Wellington]

@Mr. Otaku, if the AI's advancing and improving continues at its current pace, VAs won't be needed in the near future.

[VersuchDrei]

A lot of jobs already aren't needed anymore due to technology replacing them. Computers actually have their name from the very first job they ever took. The term computer was used for people who professionally did calculations. Basically their workplace was just a giant sheet of paper and then they'd get a calculation that needed to be done and they set down and started doing math on paper.

Synthesized sound also isn't new. It has been done for instruments for decades. Back the day people were paid good money for going into the studio and playing a few tunes on their instrument of choice. This was eventually replaced by synthesized instruments and in the end got so far that an entire profession went out of business. Those people fought against it, too, and they lost.
VAs claim it's only about their voice being reused. But we all know they fear for their future. And rightly so, I'd be afraid too if I were one of them. The future is not looking very bright for their profession. But that's not because of mods, be it sfw or nsfw, those are just the only thing they can attack. The real problem is untouchable for them.

I believe that eventually VAs won't be needed anymore because it'll just be cheaper to pull a few levers on a web interface to tune one of a set of predefined voices to your liking and then generate all those lines. But as of right now 11labs can't do laughter, it can't do combat grunts, it can't express emotions really well. All it can do is generating dialogue. So VAs are save for a few more years, if not decades. But I wouldn't recommend anyone to start in the business now, because it's dying. The only question left is how fast.

Edited July 31, 2023 by VersuchDrei

[FauxFurry]

Modern synthesized voices are a logical continuation of what developers such as Squaresoft and SEGA were doing to varying degrees of success back in the late 20th Century, be it the wholly synthesized voices or recombinations of digitized voice acting.

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

Perhaps the new jobs created using this tech will be related to the artistry of playing the virtual instrument that generates the voice in ways that are either naturalistic or ones that give rise to intentionally otherworldly vocalizations for non-human characters?

 

[Mr. Otaku]

21 hours ago, Alessia Wellington said:

@Mr. Otaku, if the AI's advancing and improving continues at its current pace, VAs won't be needed in the near future.

 

That's a separate thing. I'm talking about voice cloning and using them for future projects without the VA's explicit consent for their voice to be used in AI. If an AI can create completely new voices from scratch then that's obviously different.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Mr. Otaku
Ninja Edit

[Alessia Wellington]

1 minute ago, Mr. Otaku said:

I'm talking about voice cloning and using them for future projects without the VA's explicit consent for their voice to be used in AI.

 

It's the same situation as it was with Stable Diffusion. So, likely most lawsuits will be dismissed.

[Mr. Otaku]

6 minutes ago, Alessia Wellington said:

It's the same situation as it was with Stable Diffusion. So, likely most lawsuits will be dismissed.

 

Yeah that's because stable diffusion doesn't just copy one artist directly, if voice Ai is used that way then sure no problem. I was talking about voice cloning not voice synthesis.

[Alessia Wellington]

11 minutes ago, Mr. Otaku said:

Yeah that's because stable diffusion doesn't just copy one artist directly

 

Not entirely true. You can prompt it to use the exact same art style as a particular artist.